For the Blood is the Life
by Alexandra Spar
Summary: Harmony makes a deal with a vengeance demon to punish Spike for being "mean" to her, which indirectly results in the near-destruction of the entire town and the involvement of the Scooby Gang.
1. Default Chapter

For the blood is the life...

            He hurt, waking up. This was in itself odd; normally, the pressure of the cold stone on his hip and thigh were comforting, reassuring, like the warmth of a coverlet might be to living flesh; tonight he felt cold and stiff and sore. No one had beat him up recently, either; he was relatively bruise-free, and the pain of his snapped ribs from the last go-round with a chaos demon was nothing more than a tight ache.

            Spike sat up, absently rubbing the back of his neck, and wondered what time it was; wondered if _she_ would be there yet, doing her sweet and deadly dance with her prey. He'd been watching her for months now, secretly, whenever he could. It reminded him of the one he'd killed on the train years before. She, too, had danced rather than fought; it was beautiful at the same time as being dangerous, and holy _fuck had it turned him on. _

            Buffy was different, of course. Spike got up, stretching, and wandered over to the little fridge in which he kept his blood—pig's blood, now, dammit, but better than nothing—still thinking of her. He almost wished another crisis would present itself, another demon would attack, so that he could feel useful somehow, instead of sitting here in his wretched crypt and sucking pork blood from little bags like Capri-Sun fruit punch and trying to not think about Buffy. Yeah, getting beaten up by demons wasn't exactly his idea of a great time, but he didn't mind physical pain, and it made him feel...

            He sighed. It made him feel alive. The thrill of the hunt had done that too, but the damned Initiative wankers had taken that away from him too, when they'd put their chip in his brain; the only things he'd ever really loved had been taken away from him, and the one thing he really loved now was completely beyond his reach. 

            _Sod's law, he told himself, hoovering around the bottom of the blood bag with a straw. __Whatever bad shit can happen to Spike, will happen to Spike. Always has, always will. Like right now, for instance: of bloody course it has to be insanely cold in here when I lost my coat in the last scuffle. I'm freezing._

_            Wait,_ he thought. _Hang about. I'm freezing, and I'm a vampire. This is odd. _

Now that he thought about it, he didn't feel all that great in general; he ached all over, and he was dead tired despite the full day's rest. _Odd_.

            _What the hell. I'm just not getting all my recommended vitamins and minerals from this rubbish, he decided, and tossed the empty bag into a corner. "I'm going out," he announced to nobody. "I need a new fucking coat. Got to have a cool coat to be the big bad."_

**

            "Wow," said Buffy, shaking her hair out of her eyes, "do you smell _bad. I mean, Bog of Eternal Stench bad. They don't have Old Spice in the dungeon dimensions?"_

            The demon growled at her, revealing a charming set of eroded and multicoloured dentition, and leaped; she darted aside and neatly plunged the knife deep into the grey-green corrugations of its chest. There was an unpleasant squelching noise, and the demon abruptly turned into a heap of writhing slugs before vanishing entirely.

            Buffy looked with distaste at the black slime on her knife and knelt to wipe it in the grass. "Why can't it ever be interesting?" she muttered. "That's three Ligur demons I've done in the past week. One, two, three jumps, they're out. Talk about boring."

            "Um," said Xander behind her, "not to interrupt your monologue here or anything, but _man was that gross." He peered down at the blackened stain where the demon had been. "So that's it  for Mr. Slimy? No more monsters coming out of nowhere?"_

            "Nope," said Buffy cheerfully, turning to join him as they walked out of the cemetery. "All done. Now we go back to the clubhouse for juice and cookies."

            "Oh boy," Xander drawled. "I bet Giles will have a gold star for you, too." He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked back over his shoulder at the graveyard; for a moment he thought he'd caught a glimpse of something pale flitting between the gravestones, then it was gone. "No vamps for a while. I wonder if they know something we don't."

            Buffy shrugged, pulling Mr. Pointy from his inner pocket in her coat and regarding him. "Maybe they finally figured out that this thing works."

            "Never stopped them before." Xander folded his arms. "I don't get it. I mean, you averaged about two a night last month. Where'd they all go? Your favourite Evil Dead hasn't shown up recently either."

            Buffy shot him a look. "He's not my favourite anything."

            "Yep," Xander said, smiling and nodding. She punched him lightly in the upper arm, turning left and heading down the main street toward the Magic Box. 

**

            In a dark and mostly-deserted warehouse by the docks, a vampire and a demon were arguing. The vampire didn't need light to see by, and the demon's eyes glowed dim red, like cigarette tips in the night; the entire effect was one of danger and supernatural venom, until you got close enough to hear what they were saying. 

            "He is totally hotter than Angel," Harmony insisted. "Angel's hair is stupid."

            "Pff," said the demon. "_Angel_'s hair is stupid? Spike looks as if he's been visiting a beauty parlour for the over-seventy crowd. And what is the deal with the gel, I ask you?"

            Harmony snickered. "It's Dep Ultra Hold. He buys it in these big tubs and gets all pissy if anyone else uses it. Like I would. Ugh."

            "Yeah, totally. That's so 80s." The demon flipped her carefully layered golden locks over her shoulder and folded her arms. "You wanted the curse, I've done the curse. Now it's time for me to get what _I_ want."

            Harmony attempted to look tough. "How do I know you've really done it?"

            "Trust me, you'll know. In a week or so he'll be totally at your mercy."

            "Is it gonna be gross?" the vampire inquired.

            "We-ell, there's gonna be blood," said the demon, mildly; "I had a look back at his history, and he had TB."

            "What's a Tee Bee?" Harmony asked, tilting her head. The demon gave an exasperated sigh.

            "Tuberculosis, genius. The disease everyone had back in the 1800s. Really fashionable among the poet crowd. He was dying when he was Turned. Anyway, basically he's gonna get that back."

            "Cool!" Harmony squealed, clapping her hands. "Okay, all right, take your ugly amulet thing. Here." She proffered a small lead casket banded with rusted iron and locked with a complicated and massive padlock. "I dunno why you want that thing anyway, it's totally hideous. It's like, all disco and stuff."

            "I have my reasons," said the demon, removing the padlock with a twist of her wrist and opening the casket. "Perfect."

            "Okay, so, like, we're done, right?"

            "Oh, yes," said Ayesha, lifting out a red stone the size of a child's kidney, which gleamed sullenly in the red glow from her eyes. "We're all kinds of done."

**

            Inside the Magic Box's back room, the night seemed very far away; it had started to rain shortly after Xander and Buffy had returned, and the entire gang was currently sitting around discussing the latest episode of _Survivor, far from crisis mode. Giles had been mildly interested in the lack of vampiric activity, but as the last few weeks had been thoroughly stressful for all of them, he didn't protest too much when they decided to take the night off. _

            He sipped his tea, flipping through the local paper absently; sometimes there were articles of interest, but mostly it focused on that week's mysterious disturbances and the authorities' excuses for same. The explanation for the random removal of hearts by the Gentlemen had been particularly creative, he recalled. For some reason, the _Weekly World News_ had never really caught on in Sunnydale; perhaps weirdness here was too normal to be entertaining. 

            "Hey," he said, out  loud, and took off his glasses to have a closer look at the page. "Anya."

            Anya looked up from counting out that day's take. "I'm counting money. Ask me things when I've finished counting money."

            Giles ignored this. "Have you ever come across an amulet called the Eye of Ahriman?"

            "Ooh," said Willow. "Ahriman was the devil in the Persian religion, right?"

            "Yes, of course," said Giles distractedly. "The Eye, Anya?"

            Anya put down the stack of twenties with an exasperated sigh. "Yes, it's a talisman used in freeing demons from servitude. It's really ugly."

            "Apart from its aesthetic value," said Giles, dryly, "how powerful is it?"

            "Oh, very." Anya gave him a look. "Can I finish counting money now?"

            "Any particular kind of demon?"

            "Let me guess." Buffy was leaning in the doorway to the practice room.

            "Vengeance demons," said Anya. "I nearly got it once. I was very frustrated and annoyed when I lost it to Ayesha." She picked up the cash again. Buffy rolled her eyes and came to join them at the table. 

            "Ayesha?" said Xander, glancing around the table. "Some R and B singer?"

            Giles, who had dropped the paper and was riffling through one of his multiplicitous books, shook his head. "Ayesha was a very powerful vengeance demon," he said, not looking up. "The legends place her in Africa. She took the physical form of a white woman of astounding beauty."

            "Funny how they're all astounding beauties when they're vengeance demons," said Tara, dryly. "I mean, the other sort, the kind you fight, they look like...well..."

            "Big walking horned slug guys," finished Buffy, nodding. "Why, Giles? What's happened?"

            "The Eye of Ahriman," said Giles, "has been stolen. From the private collection of someone in Sunnydale."

            "Oh, _great," said Xander. "Lemme guess. We have to go find this thing and get it back from whoever took it, who is probably an insanely powerful demon, right?"_

            "Precisely," said Giles, and looked to Buffy. She sighed. 

            "Okay.  Willow, Tara, stay here with Giles and find out everything you can about the Eye and what it can do, stay in touch with me. Xander, you and Anya come with me. What's the address, Giles?"

            "Ten sixty West Darius Way," said the Watcher. "Are...er, that is....will you be..."

            "Is fang-boy gonna get in on this?" Xander finished.

            "No." Buffy gave them a sweet smile, turned around, and headed out. Behind her the Scoobies shared a look. 

            Rain lashed across the cemetery, blowing the last of the leaves from the trees and turning the paths into sticky mud. Spike, now huddled in a leather trenchcoat he'd liberated from a rack at the Bronze, hurried back between the ranks of gravestones to his crypt. He was beginning to be seriously concerned about the pain in his chest, which felt as if the broken rib-ends had been dancing a hornpipe, and for a moment the thought of seeking help from the do-gooders flicked across his mind; then the thought of seeing Buffy's contempt again followed and erased it. _No. Big Bad can take care of himself. _

He let himself into the crypt and shut the door behind him, shivering violently in the darkness. The water dripping from him was making the dust on the floor into mud, but he had no desire to strip off the wet leather; rather, he curled up on the top of the tomb, not feeling up to removing the lid, and almost immediately fell into a deep sleep.


	2. 2

"Nice place," said Anya, critically, looking around. Xander and Buffy were already investigating the wrecked display case which had up until recently held the Eye of Ahriman, and ignoring her. "This must have cost a lot of money."

            "Yeah," said Buffy shortly. "They didn't skimp on the security, either. This is high-class stuff." She held up a chunk of glass which glittered oddly in the half-light from the streetlamps outside. "There's a metal web in here which triggers an alarm if it's broken anywhere. I have to wonder how come the cops didn't show when whoever did this was doing it."

            "Maybe they were busy," said Xander, dryly. "You know, all-you-can-eat donut buffet down at Country Kitchen. What kind of guy has an evil demon amulet sitting in his damn living room, anyway?"

            "The kind who also apparently dabbles in the occult." Buffy had kicked aside the edge of the Oriental rug covering the floor, revealing a chalked circle complete with incomprehensible and probably evil runes. "Who did Giles say owned this place?"

            "He didn't." Anya picked up an engraved goblet, eyeing it covetously. "He just said the landlord guy and the one who lives here are out of town."

            "Oh-kay," Xander said. "So we have a crazy evil mystic guy who collects demon amulets who mysteriously leaves town just before someone breaks in and steals one of them. Why am I not surprised?"

            "Hellmouth," said Buffy, dryly. "Right. Anya, does this circle mean anything to you?"

            The ex-demon put down the goblet regretfully and examined the circle. "Oh, this is ridiculous. Anyone who knows _anything_ about summoning rituals knows that the sigil Odegra goes _before the sigil Akhar. And this is really sloppy chalkwork too. I'd be really surprised if he managed to raise anything at all with this junk."_

            Buffy caught hold of the wandering edges of her patience. "What summoning ritual _is it?" she asked. "Summoning who?"_

            "Oh, just Dagon. Under-Duke of the Seventh Circle. Really boring guy, and _forget him buying you a drink—the guy's a total miser. He's supposed to bring you power, kind of like Mephistopheles, only he always has really teeny clauses in his contracts and the guys who summon him always end up having three extra heads or being buried head-down in lava for eternity. He's a jerk."_

            Xander stared at her. "You know him?"

            "I kinda dated him. A long time ago." Anya gave him an unconvincing grin. "Are we gonna stay here all night, or what?"

            "No," said Buffy, decisively. "Giles needs to know about this. Now."

**

            Harmony was enjoying herself. She'd liberated a TV from somewhere and was watching Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey make fools of themselves; she had a secret crush on Nick, and every time Jessica did something particularly ridiculous, she'd yell at the screen. Her lair had undergone some changes since she'd kicked Spike out; all the pictures of him had come down from the walls, all the roses tacked to the edges of the bed were gone, and she'd redone the bed itself in pink ruffles with flowers printed on them, which Spike had expressly forbidden her to do. He was such a jerk. Why did he have to treat her like she was stupid? All she'd wanted was for him to love her and call her Pookie-Bear. Was that so much to ask?

            Harmony grinned to herself, clutching a stuffed teddy bear. Spike would be sorry he'd treated her so badly. He'd be sorry. And she would laugh. 

**

            He was running down a long and freezing alley, his breath catching like knives in his chest; there was something behind him, something beautiful and poisonous that would not let him go....the poems he had struggled over for so long had been torn to shreds and scattered about half a mile back, where he'd first started running from whatever was chasing him. The furious embarrassment and misery of the dinner-party had faded from his mind, replaced with terror. 

            He knew, from the pain in his chest, that he couldn't keep running much longer; soon there would be blood, and it felt like there would be a lot of it, this time. His attacks had been getting worse recently, despite all the doctors could do. He knew what would happen, because he had seen it happen to his mother and to his sisters, and part of him was almost glad; it was a thoroughly appropriate way to die, for a poet.

            _But I'm not a bloody poet, am I. _

            He risked a glance behind and promptly tripped over something in the alley, landing hard on his side; the shock drove the breath from his body, and as he struggled to get it back, he began to cough. _Damn,_ he thought, _this is going to be bad..._it wasn't the genteel cough he could get away with in polite society, but great tearing choking spasms which curled him into a knot. The blood was warm and coppery in his mouth; he knew that whatever was chasing him wasn't far away now, and there was no way he could escape; he was going to die, and he was going to die hard...

            Spike jerked bolt upright, choking. The dream was so vivid it took him almost a minute to realize where he was, and what he was; he wiped at his mouth, and his hand came away bloody. It was almost black in the half-light of his crypt.

            "What the _hell...?" he said, out loud. "I'm a fucking vampire. This isn't happening."_

            He slid off the tomb, staring at the blood smearing the back of his hand. The pain in his chest was worse now, a low ache that felt like iron bands tightening around his ribs. He wondered vaguely if he'd gotten stabbed and didn't remember it, and shrugged off his coat, pulling his T-shirt over his head to reveal alabaster skin devoid of any sort of wound. It was hot in the crypt now, bloody hot, and he was sweating. 

            Blood would help. It always helped. He staggered over to the fridge and found a pint bag, sinking his teeth into the plastic and swallowing painfully. He wasn't hungry at all, but he figured it'd be better to get something inside him. 

            Spike flopped down in his ratty armchair, still sucking on the bag, and turned on the telly with an outstretched toe. He had no idea what time it was, and cursed loudly when he was told he'd missed both back-to-back episodes of Passions. The news was next, and he crumpled up the blood bag and flung it at the screen in frustration, fishing for his Marlboros. "Sodding news," he said, out loud. "Who gives a toss about California governor elections?"

            On the screen, a thoroughly made-up brunette was shuffling papers. "And in other news, a burglary at the home of Mr. Elias Sykes occurred last night, apparently while Mr. Sykes was out of town. Only one object was apparently stolen, an antique necklace known as the Eye of Ahriman..."

            Spike choked on his cigarette and began to cough. The newsreader was continuing to prattle about weather conditions and the new roadways tax; he couldn't hear her, could barely see as his eyes teared up and the spasms bent him over. The coughing was desperate, painful; the crypt began to grey out in front of his eyes as he struggled to get control of himself, burying his face in the crook of his elbow to muffle the cough. When at last it began to ease, he stared at the scarlet splashes down his arm with mounting horror.

            When the room stopped swaying around him, he staggered out of the chair, hands pressing his chest, and turned off the telly. The Eye of Ahriman. What the _fuck was some stupid human doing with the Eye? It should've been locked in a spell-sealed vault thirty feet under the flagstones of Westminster sodding Cathedral, not sitting about in some berk's living room like a coffee-table book. _

            He had to warn the Slayer. Whoever'd stolen the Eye wasn't interested in art history; something big was going down. Shivering—the temperature seemed to have dropped ten degrees in the crypt—Spike struggled into his shirt and wrapped the coat around himself, trying to ignore the pain in his chest. He didn't need to breathe; why was he coughing, and why the _hell_ was he coughing blood?

            _Never mind that, he told himself firmly. _Got to warn Buffy. Got to let them know.__

            He opened the door of the crypt and slipped out into the night. 

            **

            "You're sure?" Giles asked. "Dagon?"

            "Hello, ex-demon here," Anya said, sounding miffed. "I know what I saw."

            "Yes, of course, I'm sorry." The Watcher put down his cup of tea and started to pace. "Any sign of recent activity in the circle? Any burn marks or stains?"

            "Nope," Buffy told him. "Looked pretty old. And Anya said they'd messed up some of the scribbly things anyway, so they probably couldn't have raised a demon."

            "Not to be Mr. Negative or anything," Xander added, "but what if they did raise a demon but they messed up, so they couldn't control it?"

            The others turned to glare at him. He shrugged, subsiding. "I'm just saying, is all."

            "Yes, well," Giles said. "The Eye will no doubt make itself known shortly. Any out-of-the-ordinary demonic activity tonight, Buffy?"

            "All quiet on the evil front. I dusted a vamp near the cemetery, but that's it."

            "Interesting," Giles started to say, but was interrupted by a banging on the door. He frowned. "Who the blazes...?"

            Buffy picked up a stake and pushed past him, hurrying to the door. She unlocked all three of the locks and cracked the door open wide enough to reveal Spike standing in the rain, swaying alarmingly, with a trickle of blood tracing its way down from the corner of his mouth. 

            "Let me in," he gasped. "I have to warn you—" He lost the sentence in a fit of coughing, reaching out for the wall to steady himself. "Please."

            "Spike," said Buffy, "what the hell is wrong with you?"

            "Don't...know...oh, bugger..." He began to cough again, and Buffy's eyes widened as he wiped more blood from his mouth. Slowly she stood aside, just as his knees buckled and he fell forward into the Magic Box, lying in a crumpled heap on the floor.

            There was silence for a moment. The others had risen and were standing in the doorway to the back room, staring. "Well," said Xander. "That was gross."

            His voice broke whatever spell they were under, and Giles hurried forward to help Buffy carry the unconscious vampire to one of the couches in the back. Spike's normal pallor had turned into an interesting shade of grey, and his sharp cheekbones stood out like spars. He was drenched and shivering.

            "Giles?" asked Buffy quietly. "What's going on?"

            "I haven't the foggiest," said the Watcher, frowning. "I've never seen a vampire in this condition." He folded his arms, thoughtfully. Buffy knelt down beside the couch and put a hand on Spike's forehead; behind them, Xander and Anya exchanged a knowing glance. The Slayer looked up. 

            "He's on fire. This makes no sense, Giles. He's obviously sick, but I mean...he's a _vampire. They don't __get sick."_

            "Um," said Xander. "Remember Drusilla? And then Angel with that poisony thi...oh right, bad subject. No talking about Angel."

            Buffy sighed, shaking her head. Giles tapped his fingers on the table. "Call Willow, Xander. Get her and Tara here. I want to do some tests."

            Xander nodded and went up front to call the witches. Anya joined him. Buffy ignored them both, staring at the fallen Spike, an unreadable expression on her face. He was lying utterly still, looking not unlike an alabaster statue wearing wet black leather, and for some reason she couldn't take her eyes off him. 

            "He said he had to warn me," she said, not looking up. "What would he be warning me about?"

            "I don't know," said Giles, distractedly, flipping through a book. "This is insane, Buffy. It looks as if he's having pulmonary hemorrhages, but I can't think of anything that would do that to a vampire. It looks like...well, it looks like TB, but that's ridiculous."

            "What do we do?" 

            "Well, there's not much we can do. I suppose we'd better get him warm...help me off with his coat and get some blankets, would you?" Giles flicked a concerned glance at her. She was very pale, her face expressionless, but he noticed the hand which still held the stake was shaking a very little. "Buffy?"

            She started. "Sorry. Blankets. On it."

            Giles, left alone with Spike, sighed. Since Angel's departure, things regarding vampires had been reasonably straightforward. Vampires bad. But Spike had been helpful, albeit grudgingly, several times in the past few months, and the chip in his head did prevent him from doing anything particularly harmful to humans, so he was a sort of grey area. Giles didn't like the way Buffy had been looking at him. Things were complicated enough as it was; she didn't need this making life more difficult. 


	3. 3

            In a way it was just as well that she was now the head of the Summers household, Buffy thought to herself as she paced before the windows, hands clasped behind her back. At least now she didn't have to think up complicated excuses for not coming home before dawn, and she certainly didn't have to worry about her mother worrying about her. Still—especially now—she wished her mom was there; wished anyone could be there to tell her what to do and who to run to, when all the aces were down and nothing made any sense anymore. 

            She and Giles, with the help of Xander, had moved Spike to the house on Revello Drive; he'd not woken since he collapsed in the doorway of the Magic Box, and his fever was only getting higher. Willow and Tara were working on a few spells to try and figure out what was wrong with him. Currently, however, Spike was about number three on her list of priorities: first, find out where the Eye of Ahriman had got to; second, get it back; third, fix Spike. And then wait for Dawn to get home from her friends' house and try to hide the whole sick-vampire-down-the-hall thing from her, which would be oh so much fun. 

            But was it really in that order?

            Buffy wished she smoked, for a moment. There was something _right about lighting up while she was pacing, something that resounded with all the stupid action movies she'd ever seen. She really, really wished she'd never met the damn blonde vampire, never listened to a word he'd said, never had a good look at those cheekbones or those eyes which could be either molten-metal yellow or deep cerulean blue. _He has no soul. The only thing keeping him from utter carnage is the chip in his head, and we all know how reliable that stuff is. _ She pushed away the memory of Riley's tachycardia and the desperation it had caused, and then the memory of Riley himself. _I can't think about that now. I can't.__

            But there had been something that closed in her chest tonight that she couldn't ignore, a feeling like an iron hand gripping her insides; the way he'd looked at her with those smoky feverish eyes and told her he had to warn her....she couldn't quite put it out of her mind. They'd put him to bed in the guest bedroom and turned him on his side with a towel under his face, so that if the blood put in another appearance he wouldn't choke on it: neither she nor Giles had wanted to think too much about that, since he didn't actually breathe per se; it was too complicated, and neither of them had time to really think about the logistics of the situation. The Eye of Ahriman was their priority now.  Not Spike. 

            _Every Slayer has a deathwish, he'd said that night outside the Bronze. She was beginning to think that perhaps he might be right. _

            A noise from upstairs jerked her out of her reverie, and she hurried up the steps, still in her leather coat and long scarf; she'd been expecting to be out on patrol, until Spike had chucked a large wrench into her plans for the night. Sighing, she shrugged out of the coat and hung it over the edge of the banister before going into the spare room. 

            He was lying curled up in a knot, the comforter thrown to the floor, sweating and shivering at the same time. As Buffy came around to the side of the bed, he moaned and curled up tighter, shaking violently;  she was surprised to see how slender he was, how thoroughly vulnerable he looked with his shirt off and his ribs exposed to the halflight of the bedside lamp. 

            Buffy sat down beside the bed, pulling the comforter back over him; at her touch, he shuddered and coughed himself awake. She pulled her hand back as if she'd touched something hot; he jerked, staring up at her. 

            "Slayer," he managed, in a voice reminiscent of NyQuil commercials. "I didn't know you cared."

            "I don't," retorted Buffy. "You just barged into the Box and totally collapsed all over the floor. What were we supposed to do?"

            "I dunno," said Spike..."leave me there? I suppose I'd be in the way, yeah?"

            Buffy swiped her wet hair out of her eyes. "Look, Spike. I don't want you here any more than you want to be here, okay? Let's just be civil. What were you doing at the Box, and what was it you wanted to warn us about." She sat back, hands clasped on her lap.

            Spike struggled to sit up and eventually achieved a sort of verticality. "There's a demon. Someone's got the Eye of Ahriman, Buffy, they're going to raise something, or free something, that din't ought to be freed. You lot have to stop it."

            "Yeah, I know," said Buffy, getting up. "You mean that's it? That's what all this Chopin stuff is about? We _knew_, Spike. We already knew."

            He sighed and nodded, making as if to get out of the bed and out of her hair, when another apocalyptic coughing fit seized him; he turned away from her, burying his face in the crook of his arm, desperately choking for breath. Despite herself, Buffy sat down on the edge of the bed and put an arm around his shoulders, supporting him as he coughed miserably. The sheets bloomed red, despite his attempts to muffle the coughing, and she found herself becoming afraid for a vampire for the second time in her life.

            Spike, still hacking, tried to dislodge her. "Go 'way, Slayer," he choked, "you got better things t'do...."

            "Shut up," said Buffy, and tightened her arm around him; eventually the spasms eased, and she let him lie back against the pillows. He had gone greyer, and the blood stood out like a neon light against his pale lips. She bit her own lip, frightened despite herself. "Hang on, Spike," she told him, and hurried downstairs, fishing in the fridge for some uncouth leftovers and firing up the microwave. She returned to the guest room with a steaming mug of something that looked like best Beaujolais.

            "Spike...want something to eat?" she asked, quietly. The vampire rolled over and regarded her with flinty eyes.

            "You're gonna feed me now?" he asked.

            She proffered the mug. His eyes widened, and flicked from blue to gold and back, and he went a shade paler. "Oh, fuck," he muttered. "I can't. I'll be sick."

            Buffy set the mug down, confused. "Wait," she said, "don't you guys have this bloodlust thing?"            

            Spike shuddered and turned away. "I can't. I don't feel good, okay?"

            Buffy frowned. "It's the same stuff you always have. From the butcher."

            Spike groaned. "Please.....just take it away...."

            She carried the mug back and shoved it in the fridge, running through all Giles's vamp lore in her head. There must be something seriously wrong with Spike if he couldn't drink blood, even pig blood....he looked so ill, and he had asked for their help...

            By the time she returned to the guest bedroom, Spike had lapsed into an uneasy, feverish sleep. She took her time taping the curtains and making sure no sunlight would enter the room, part of her hoping that he'd rouse again and give her some information, and part of her longing to hide his presence from her younger sister, who had a thing for him. 

            **

            "This," said Giles flatly, "is ridiculous."

            "No argument here," Xander said, with a shrug. Buffy thwacked him with a copy of _Moxibustion and Crystal Therapy, and he subsided._

            "What is?" she asked. Giles held up a printout, pushing his glasses up on his nose. 

            "This. It's a complete blood workup: there's no sign of TB bacilli, or any of the pneumoniae, or anything that might cause these symptoms. Totally clean." He paused and perched on the edge of the table, shaking his head. "Of course there's no reason he should have any somatic pathogens running around in his blood, inasmuch as he's already dead...oh, this makes no sense."

            "Could a curse do it?"  Buffy asked. Xander and Giles turned to her in a move so coordinated it might have made her laugh, if she hadn't felt so old and worn and weary. 

            "A curse?" Giles took off his glasses and began to polish them, a sure sign that he wished he'd thought of something before the others had. "Well...I don't know..."

            "Well, vamps are vulnerable to some mystical poisons, right? There could be some sort of curse that makes them sick."

            "Great," said Xander, "somebody cursed Mr. Clairol, fine, can we go find out who it was and maybe take them out to dinner?"

            "Xander," Buffy said, sounding dead tired, "I think Anya's rubbing off on you. What am I gonna tell Dawn when she gets home from her friend's house? Hi, how was school, have you done your homework, there's leftovers in the fridge, oh and don't go into the guest bedroom cause it's got a vampire in it?"

            "Works for me," Xander said, "only I'd suggest that maybe you leave the vampire part out entirely. How come he's here anyway? Why can't he go back to his nice dank crypt?"

            "Look, I don't want him here any more than you do, but I can't just walk away," Buffy said. "He's...well, he's dying."

            "And that would be a bad thing?"

            "Buffy's right," said Giles, putting his specs back on. "Spike has been helpful recently, and he did make an effort despite his illness to warn us about the Eye." 

            "Which we already knew about, so it cuts no ice with me," Xander returned. "Aah, forget it. Buff, you going out on patrol tonight?"

            She sighed. "I'm not wild about leaving Dawn alone with him, but I guess I don't have a choice. Giles, have you heard anything from Willow and Tara?"

            "Not yet. They're working on some spells to try and trace the Eye's energy signature." Giles paused. "And to see if they can figure out what's doing this to Spike."

            Buffy nodded. "Okay, guys. I'm going. Keep in touch," she added, and slipped her cell phone into the pocket of her leather duster. "The show must go on."

**

            The wreck of Sunnydale High School, normally a haunt for disgruntled street people and the young vamps who fed on them, was eerily deserted this particular night. Even the rats and similar denizens of the ruins seemed to have upped stakes and moved on; it was utterly silent and dark in the rubble of the old library. 

            Well, almost utterly. 

            Ayesha, in a T-shirt that said "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me" and a pair of seven-hundred-dollar leather pants,  sat crosslegged next to the rift of the Hellmouth itself and held up the ruby on its golden chain. It was dark red, the colour of slow-flowing venous blood, cut and faceted in a rough egg-shape; the chain ran through a hole drilled in its center.  It had originally been set into a statue of Ahriman, the Persian devil, and had been stolen around the time of Alexander the Great; a hell-god had managed to get hold of it and use it as a vessel for some of his power,  which was why it had promptly been stolen again and passed from demon to demon down the ages. It could do a lot of amusing things, but the reason Ayesha wanted it was simple: she was thoroughly tired of being a vengeance demon, subject to the whims of jilted lovers, and she wanted out of the gig.  It had been good fun, back in Kor, messing about with Kallikrates and being worshipped, but over the centuries it had gotten stale.

            She let go of the chain, which swung back and forth a few times and stilled; the Eye hung in midair, turning gently. The light from Ayesha's eyes lit a dim fire inside its facets. She smiled to herself and began to chant the words that would unlock the power of the Eye and break the limitations on her own power, freeing her to be what she had always wanted to be: a pure demon, without qualifiers or duties, able to do as she pleased. 

            Red light spilled from the ruby, flaking off in slow glints and gathering like mist on the floor of the chamber. Ayesha's voice took on a fuller timbre, as though more than one person was speaking the words; the air felt closer, charged with energy, as in a lightning storm. The ruins of Sunnydale High shuddered and settled, sending down showers of dust and chunks of plaster, as the red-lit words went on and on.

            From outside, it appeared as if something in the wreck was on fire; the light didn't flicker as flames do, however, and it grew stronger by the minute. Ayesha's chant reached its climax as a massive shaft of scarlet light shot up from Sunnydale High, reaching up through the clouds that had begun to mass, and red lightning struck down, scorching the ground in thirteen points describing a wide circle. There was a deafening crack; every light in Sunnydale flickered off and on again, and the red light vanished. 

            The only sound was the ticking of cooling metal and tile.

            Inside the library, Ayesha opened her eyes again; the Eye, cooling from white heat, still hung in the air. She reached out and closed her fingers around it, took her hand away unscathed, and then put the chain around her neck. The ruby promptly burned a hole in her shirt, ruining the word "clowns," which she ignored; grinning happily, she got to her feet and stretched, enjoying the feeling of unlimited power.

            "Well," she said out loud, her voice almost half an octave lower, "that was fun."

            **

            "I'm hooooome," Dawn called out as she tossed her bookbag on the kitchen table. "Guys? Buffy? Anyone here?"

            Xander appeared from the kitchen, string cheese in hand. "Hey, Dawnster. Buffy's patrolling, left me in charge."

            Dawn raised an eyebrow. "Where's Anya?"

            "With the rest of the Scoobies. Uh, there's kind of this evil demon amulet thing at large. Nothing to worry about."

            "Oh, man," she sighed, rummaging in the fridge for a Coke. "Is this another of the world's-gonna-end things?"

            "Nah, just your everyday supernatural emergency," Xander told her, peeling off another string of cheese. Dawn was staring at something in the fridge.

            "Xander, since when do we have pig blood in the house? Ew." She pulled out a bag containing dark-red liquid. "This is totally gross."

            "Um," said Xander. 

            "Buffy's not a vampire or anything now, is she?" Dawn asked, looking up at him with her eyes narrowed. Xander snorted.

            "The Slayer a vampire? Yeah, right. And I'm totally fang-free, before you ask." He exhibited his teeth. "See, no fangies."

            Dawn looked skeptical, shutting the fridge. "Okay, who's this for then?"

            Xander scowled. "Spike."

            "Is he coming over?" Dawn asked excitedly. "He tells the coolest stories."

            "He's kind of already here," said Xander, focusing intently on his string cheese. "It's a long story, Dawnie. Uh, don't you have homework to do or something?"

            Dawn fixed him with a slightly younger version of the Buffy Stare. "Xander."

            "Oh, all right," he groused, sitting down at the kitchen table. "Spike'sreallysickandBuffythinksitmightbeacurseorsomethingandshe'slettinghimstayinthe guestbedroombecauseshe'stooniceforherowngood."

            "What?" Dawn shook her head. "Try saying that a _lot_ slower."

            "Spike," said Xander, looking sour, "is sick. Something weird is wrong with him. Your sister has put him up in the guest bedroom against my better judgment because apparently she's forgotten the whole "he's evil" part."

            "Spike's sick?" Dawn put down her Coke. "But he's a vampire. How can he get sick? I thought they were all immune and stuff."

            "Apparently not," said Xander. "Okay, homework now. Homework is good." He paused. "I can't believe I just said that." He looked up to see Dawn disappearing up the stairs, and half-rose to follow her, but sighed and slumped back in the chair. Summers women were not to be argued with. 

            Dawn knocked tentatively on the door. "Spike?"

            No answer. She knocked again, then opened the door a little, peering in. It was dark except for a nightlight beside the bed, which dimly revealed a dark shape curled under the covers. Dawn tiptoed into the room, shutting the door behind her, and approached the bed.

            "Spike?" she asked again, quietly.

            The covers moved a bit, and revealed the top of his head. "Sod off, Harris..."

            "Spike, it's me, Dawn."

            A hand emerged, black nail varnish chipped a bit on the edges, and pulled the blankets down further; he blinked at her in the dimness, grey-white and sweating, his eyes entirely too bright. "...Nibblet?" he croaked. 

            "Yeah....Spike, are you okay? What's going on?"

            "I dunno," he said. "I seem to be dying again, which is a bloody nuisance, I can tell you."

            "You can't die," Dawn protested. "No dying."

            "Not sure I can oblige, nibblet..." he croaked, and began to cough; awful, choking coughs that brought up spatters of blood, black in the half-light. Dawn stared.

            "Oh my God, Spike," she said. "I'll...I'll call someone, stay there..."

            He reached out a hot hand, the spasm passing, and grabbed her wrist. "No," he managed. "Dawn...there's sod-all that can be done. Don't worry."

            "Don't _worry?" she demanded. "Spike..."_

            "It's all right, nibblet," he said, with the hint of a smile. "It's going to be all right."


	4. 4

            Ayesha moved through the night with the Eye hanging like a glowing coal between the swells of her breasts, her eyes mirroring its red glow like a pair of cigarette-ends in the dimness. She had forgotten what it was like to possess this sort of power. It was like being drunk on fine wine, like flying on the warm winds of pure sweet hashish. Her blood thrummed in her veins.

             It had been like this, she remembered, in Kor, all those years ago: only she had been wearing yards and yards of pale gauze, her beauty wrapped and bound to protect her subjects from its merciless glare. The wind whispered against her bare arms now; her body was young and lovely as it had been young and lovely all those thousands of years ago, unchanging, untouched by time.

            The night was still young. She could feel the pain of the young vampire, like a soft ache on the edge of her consciousnes, and enjoyed it. He wasn't going to last much longer.

            It had not been hard to reach back into his history and find the memory of that particular pain, and map its pathways through his body, find the loci of the disease still present in his dead lungs, the old cavitary lesions that had collapsed when he ceased to breathe, all those years ago. It had been even easier to flick out a thread of her energy and fill up those lesions again with magic. He did not breathe, but she reactivated that reflex with another thread of magic, and his blood began to circulate once more through the dead lungs, and met the voracious hunger of the resurrected disease, and spilled its red tide through the ancient holes gnawed by long-dead bacilli. His fever rose, and rose again, as her magic worked its way through his body.

            It wasn't, perhaps, one of her best vengeance curses, but it was amusingly ironic, and she found herself partial to the feedback from his suffering. She would have to remember this, another time.

            And now, she was hungry. Mortal life-force thrummed all around her, lighting up the night like little candleflames. She smiled sharply to herself, the sort of smile seen on Great White sharks just before they burst out of the water and bite helicopters in half.

            Buffy patrolled, walking with the easy, rhythmic gait of one who intends to keep walking all night. Mr. Pointy was firm and slightly splintery in her hand, a comforting solid chunk of reality. She was trying, with most of her mind, to not think about the vampire lying in her spare bedroom with his hard-earned blood staining her damned Martha Stewart sheets; it was something of a relief when a snarl from her left distracted her, and she let herself fight the vamp rather than staking him immediately; the rush of adrenaline did something for the creeping feeling that she should be elsewhere, sitting beside a bed in a darkened room. He didn't last long, of course. They never did.

            She grinned as a couple more of them—she recognized one as a kid who'd been in her graduating class at Sunnydale High—leapt out from the bushes, and sent one flying with a roundhouse kick while she hit the other one so hard under the chin that he actually left the ground and flew backwards in a rather elegant arc, breaking his back on a convenient tombstone. Taking her time, she turned both of them into dust, blew a wayward strand of blonde hair from her eyes, and shook her leather jacket back to hang elegantly, before proceeding on her way.

            There was still something wrong with the night, even though she'd done the vamps; she could sort of feel something else out there, something bigger than ordinary undead jerks. It was not unlike the feeling she'd had when the Master was around. Something big, and something bad.

            She scowled and turned left, making another circuit of the cemetery. Whatever it was, it would probably come and find her. They always did.

            "What do you mean everything's gonna be okay?" demanded Dawn, her eyes huge in the darkened room. "Spike, you're all...bleedy. You can't die."

            He coughed again, wincing at the taste of his own blood. "Kid....like I said...there's not much that can stop that now. This has got to be some sort of curse."

            "But can't we do something? Uncurse you? I mean we have all this magic stuff, right, and we have Giles and books and potions and things..."

            Spike reached out with a hot hand and traced the curve of her cheekbone. "It's all right, nibblet. It's probably for the best, anyway."

            "What do you mean?"

            He turned away, closing his eyes, unwilling to tell her whose face hung in the blackness of his mind, whose elegant, vicious body he saw every time he closed his eyes. He knew damn well she hated him, that she'd never in a million years turn to him with those wide too-old eyes in her girl's face and speak the words he longed to hear. And he was old enough—Lord, he was more than old enough—to know that there wasn't a way to get her out of his mind while he still _had_ a mind.

            Perhaps whoever had done this to him had really done him a favour, after all.

            Dawn was talking again, a long way away. He did rather regret the idea of disappointing her; the younger Summers meant rather more to him than he wanted to admit. He dragged the wandering edges of his consciousness together and looked up at her.

            "Spike," she was saying. "What do you mean it's for the best? Do you _wanna_ die?"

            He smiled a little, painfully. "I'm tired, nibblet. Bloody knackered. I've had it with creeping around in graveyards like a bad special effect, and I've definitely had it with this bloody chip in my head." He coughed, and didn't add _And__ I'm fucking tired of pretending I don't love your sister like deserts love rain._

            Dawn's eyes were too bright, in the darkness; for a moment she looked oddly like Buffy, that so-effective mixture of steel and vulnerability, and he sighed. "Relax, Dawnie. Shouldn't you be doing homework or something?"

            She scowled at him. "Screw the homework. I wanna be here with you. And you don't get to die, Spike. I don't care how tired you are. You do _not_ get to die, okay?"

            "Dammit," he said weakly. She gave him a bit of a smile, and perched beside him on the bed.

            "Think of it like this, Spike: without you, Xander'd have to find someone else to pick on. Like me."

            He closed his eyes, wearily, not sure how to make it all right for her, to make her understand, and drifted again into the half-doze of the desperately ill.

            Willow, in a pink fuzzy bathrobe, waved a bunch of smouldering herbs over a circle drawn on the floorboards of Tara's room. The other witch was murmuring words in Latin, her hands cupped around a crystal ball that glowed a dim blue-white in the darkened room. As the chant progressed, a spark of red began to glimmer in the crystal, slowly growing brighter and brighter as the words went on: Willow, her herb bunch still in her hand, came to join Tara at the other side of the circle, and stared into the orb.

            "There it is," she whispered. "It's moving."

            Tara opened her eyes, made a strange gesture with one hand; the room seemed to freeze for a moment, and then reality came back. "I've got it. It's....changed, Willow. I think I know what the Eye was supposed to feel like, and it's different. It's lost some of its power."

            "Why would it do that?" Willow sat back on her heels and put the herbs gently down in a copper bowl. "Could something have been draining it?"

            "I think so," Tara muttered. "Hang on." She handed the crystal to Willow, warm to the touch, slightly tingling in the tips of her fingers, as if it were radioactive. Putting the tips of her own fingers to her forehead, Tara shut her eyes and concentrated: her mind spread out, like a drop of oil on a hot pan, thinning and expanding at once; she felt little sparks of energy flash through her and pass on, as her consciousness flickered through the minds of people on the streets, and suddenly came upon a mind that was a blowtorch flame in the darkness. "It's her," she whispered. "Ayesha. She's on the move."

            "Oh God," said Willow.  "Buffy's out there."

            Tara let her mind contract in on itself, opened her eyes, and met her lover's gaze. "Buffy's out there with a vengeance demon who's got a nasty power surge," she said. "A really, really nasty power surge."

            As if they'd rehearsed it, both girls jumped to their feet and reached for their coats. "We have to get out there," Tara muttered. "We have to do _something._"


End file.
